meetups on meetup?

Chris from Melbourne and occasional drupal Melbourne meetups... I intend to be a lot more involved in the drupal community over the coming months and i had one thought initially that i would be happy to help with.

As far as i know, drupal meetups aren't featured on meetup.com, i know its annoying to sign up to yet another service, but it hosts quite a lot of tech meetups around Australia and it would certainly be a good way to spread the drupal goodness a little further.

I already have an organisers account and am happy to list peoples meetups as myself/employer for the foreseeable future as long as people give me reasonable notice, perhaps under a banner of drupal Australia or something like that.

Then again, maybe im wrong and groups outside of Melbourne are listing events there, but i thought id get the ball rolling at least!

It's a fair call. Ultimately it would be better if there was an API that could be hooked into GDO so that it could be automated, but barring that at the moment I will make sure that we get on this ASAP.

I was a bit surprised by an email from meetup this morning saying that there was a new Drupal Melbourne group. Made me wonder what I'd missed while I was away. I had not seen this thread, which thankfully gives a bit more context.

I agree it would be good to increase awareness of drupalmel outside of GDO. I've been saying that for ages! We should be cross-posting about our meets everywhere and anywhere we can. Co-ordinating an automated and strategic way of doing so is something we should consider. We had a list of places when I was running LUV - I should dig that up.

Meetup is a good place to cross post announcements, but I really think the organiser should be someone who is part of the Melbourne based community.

Ryan - if you can't transfer the organiser role to Brian or Chris, then I think it would be best if you shut down the group, and let one of them create a new group they can both co-ordinate. Thanks for taking the initiative, and offering to cover the costs, but the group ownership should be controlled locally.

Hey Ryan do you have enough community feedback about this? The guys in Melbourne do a fantastic job and have a lot of support here. Shouldn't be a big deal to close the Melbourne group you've set up if they can't be provided full access.

Great to see some really positive responses, last thing I want to see is more negativity when it's not needed. I think it would be great to spread more awareness of the Drupal Melbourne events (although I'm also concerned that it will force our hand to find a larger venue).

I do think it's a little deceitful of a company to charge non-profit groups a rate to advertise, but if it is the direction we are going I would like to know that it is at least in the hands of the local community, unless of course we could organise a national body, in which case it would be controlled by that body.

Ryan, I acknowledge that you did this with the best intentions, but it's clear that the local community agree that we would prefer to manage this locally , could you transfer full permissions to Chris or myself and then remove yourself. Or close the group so we can start one that is managed by the local community.

A bit of history and current status - probably safe to ignore for most people or just jump to the end:

As per the original post here, the idea of cross posting the melb events on meetup.com to provide additional awareness was raised. As I've already been doing that for the Sydney group, and from experience knew it cost money to do. I already had a paid account, so it wasn't going to cost me anything extra - so I created the group with the intention that Chris and/or someone else (likely Brian) could manage it. I just needed a person to join the group before I could give it to them (as mentioned in my post). It sat for almost a week, so obviously people were busy/traveling/etc... and after 3-4 days, meetup.com notifies people in the region who have marked an interest in Drupal about the group.

Then some how this became a big deal yesterday. Brian (realityloop) contacted me via IRC about it, so once he joined the group I gave him full access - well, as much access as I could without exposing my billing details - but apparently this wasn't enough. From my understanding there were two main concerns:

1) I didn't ask his permission to do this.
To be honest, I don't remember ever having to ask permission to anyone to promote Drupal or provide a helping hand to the community. In a comparable situation, Aimee started a beginners group in Sydney last year with out asking my permission. I doubt she thought she needed to either - I did my best to work with her which I think was fine.

2) Brian wasn't seen as the head of it / I was getting credit for being an organizer
Due to limitations of meetup.com, I couldn't see an easy way to hide the people "organizing" it and with the permissions model I couldn't remove myself and still support the group. I understand I don't live in Melb, so I'm not active there but the goal was just being an additional distribution channel rather than a main hub. I kind of assumed some trust would go both ways and I don't think I was holding anything back besides my cc details.

As most people, I had to do my job so I said I would look into the situation further later in the evening and also wait for some other people to comment on the situation so that we didn't do anything rash. As mentioned above, Brian wasn't satisfied and insisted the group be shut down.

Rather than wait, Brian then used his stewardship to defile the group by changing the url, removing the drupalicon, and changing all the text to denounce the group.

To be honest, I really don't think any of this was warranted. I don't think I ever indicated any thing other than a helping hand, and I would think my reputation in the community would've provided enough trust that I wasn't trying to take over anything or whatever the fear is/was. A little patience would've gone a long way here as well I think. This kind of negative reaction to a contributing hand is also what turns less experienced community members away or discourages other people from putting up their hand to help out.

Current State: I removed Brian's access this morning and tried to clean up the mess a bit. With some searching this morning, I have found a way to remove myself as the organizer but it doesn't allow me to continue supporting the group and it requires someone else to have a paid account to hand over. Chris has joined the group and I have nominated him to take over the group. From my understanding, it won't cost him anything extra and as soon as he accepts the request its his to do as he pleases. (including adding Brian back if that's what Chris wants). Until he accepts, the group continues to show me as the organizer but to be very clear this is only an interim / temporary situation.

I hope this ends this thread and the group goes on to be a positive channel for promoting the melb events (from what I can tell it has already connected with 6-8 people who weren't already part of the group). If anyone wants to discuss this further, or wishes to point out my folly that I'm obviously oblivious to, please contact me privately.

I don't think there was ever any intention or expectation that the group wouldn't be controlled and managed by someone in the Melb community, but I've said all I'm going to about this. The transfer should be seamless once Chris accepts.

1.) My concern was that as someone who is based in Sydney you started the group without any liasion with any of the known organizers of Melbourne activities, it would have been more prudent to offer to sponsor and wait for feedback, Chris already had an account that could have started a melbourne group so by starting it without any liasion this situation eventuated.

2.) It was never about having my head as the organizer. Ryan, as I stated on our phone discussion I would actually prefer for a Drupal Melbourne account to be created as the organizer. It was about yourself being misrepresented as the organizer of Melbourne events. It should be clear by my request to make Chris the organiser in front of myself that it's not about putting my head up front.

I changed the group name and title because at the time you appeared to be refusing to give full organizer role to anyone but yourself, or shut down the group so we could start one organized by the locals.

It's unfortunate that it became the issue that it did, and I truly believe you meant well. So I'm glad it seems an acceptable outcome will be acheived.

I'm not privy to the back story, but I'd mention that while Ryan does have a drupal-related business and inherent interest in helping drupal flourish and grow in our community, he has navigated that fine line between promoting his business and the ecosystem in which it thrives, in a consistent, fair, and active way.

He is not the only one either, and as I'm sure many can attest, it's a fine line to walk.
He's been behind a lot of the momentum in our community (I can speak for Sydney), and I don't think it's fair that this thread seems to intimate that there was an interested intent in these actions, or reluctance to hand over.

I'm not surprised he would have taken the initiative on this.
A lot of the logistics of building community imply such action. I don't believe there would be any hesitation in handing anything over as seems clear from his response.

There are valid points here, and the suggested resolutions seems to be fair.
I don't think the tone is warranted though.

I was reluctant to respond to this being in the brisbane group and nothing to do with sydney and melbourne.

however i would like to make some generic comments now the dust seems to have settled.

First of all i think this is a great example of how a community can work together. ive had a lot to do with volunteer groups and communities - both online and offline. there are always little disagreements, arguments and problems with how to move forward,get results, achieve aims and outcomes of group etc.
this is no different.

I think this is a good example of a healthy community, one whose members aren;t shy of speaking their minds, acting civilly toward each other, disagreeing in public and then reconciling.

I believe that this transparency shows that members and the group as a whole are capable of moderating and managing the group and working to wards shared aims and ideals.

So congrats to Ryan and Brian, and all the others with input.
Onward and upward!